The present invention is an integrated underwater diving system including backpack, weight system, bouyancy compensator, and equipment bag. The system is particularly useful for Scruba diving.
Scuba diving has attracted the attention and interest of a diverse and wide-spread segment of the population. Equipment has become safer and easier to use in recent years, with the consequence that more and more people annually are adopting diving as a sport. Divers now can enjoy a variety of diving experiences, including reef exploration, deep diving, wreck diving, drift diving, underwater photography, shell collection, spear fishing, cave diving, and treasure hunting.
Although diving can be enjoyed in virtually any inland lake, river or other body of water, divers, particularly sport divers, as a group generally prefer the warmer, clear waters of such areas as the Carribean, South Pacific, Red Sea, the waters off Micronesia, Australia and New Zealand, to name but a few. Unless a diver is fortunate enough to live in one of these areas, it is generally necessary for a diver to travel to a desirable dive location by airline, ship or a combination of both.
Accordingly, divers must pack all the equipment necessary for diving, such equipment including regulators, masks, fins, snorkel, wetsuits, and the like, into a bag, carry the bag to the airport or embarcation point, check the bag through the airline or other common carrier, and upon arriving at the destination, again carry the bag and diving paraphanelia to the hotel or other lodging. In addition, each day a typical diver must carry all of the necessary diving equipment from the place of lodging to the dive boat, and at the end of the day from the dive boat to the place of lodging.
Numerous dive bags and equipment bags, of course, are available on the market. Most such bags, however, provide no protection whatsoever for the rough handling typically encountered in transporting baggage through an airline or other common carrier. Additionally, such bags are typically bulky and difficult to carry, and provide no system for readily organizing diving equipment within the bag. Moreover, insofar as the inventors are aware, no dive bags or equipment bags have been specifically designed to integrate with the diving equipment to provide a single, overall transport system.
Additionally, diving equipment itself available to date leaves much to be desired. The equipment is typically heavy, bulky and cumbersome; is difficult to carry through an airport to the dive site and back home; is difficult to pack securely; is difficult to work with on a dive boat, namely stowing the bag, finding equipment and re-packing the bag; is difficult to don; and is generally uncomfortable. Moreover, equipment available today tends to restrict a diver's movement; interferes with the use of underwater photographic equipment; is difficult to ditch in water and on the land; and is generally unattractive. Underwater diving systems available today also typically use harnesses or vest-like bouyancy compensators to allow a diver to carry an air tank or air supply on the diver's back, such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,090,205 to Hurwitz et al; U.S. Pat. No. 1,982,105 to Akers; U.S. Pat. No. 3,135,098 to Root; U.S. Pat. No. 3,105,359 to Ellis; U.S. Pat. No. 3,670,509 to Walters; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,891,131 to Tabata. Such harnesses and vests must be continually adjusted and re-adjusted, and are difficult to get into and out of. Other air tank carriers or backpacks have rigid uncomfortable "shoulder hooks" such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,968,159 to Edmund and U.S. Pat. No. 3,842,611 to Anderson.
It is also common in modern day diving to use a bouyancy compensating device. The bouyancy compensating device works in conjunction with a weight system to maintain the diver at neutral buoyancy regardless of depth.
It is known, for example, that different divers have differing natural bouyancies when suited up in typical underwater diving gear. Particularly when a wetsuit is used, divers normally will exhibit some natural positive bouyancy, or, in other words, will float to some degree. In order to counteract that natural bouyancy, divers use varying amounts of weights. The weights are typically lead masses molded in various forms to provide individual weights of one, two, four and six pound weight units. Those weight units are typically molded with slots to enable a diver to carry the weights on a web belt attached about his or her waist. In an emergency requiring an immediate or rapid ascent, divers require the ability to quickly release the weight belt. Thus, weight belts are typically provided with quick-release buckles allowing the diver to detach the weight belt and ascend.
Separate weight belts, however, are cumbersome, difficult to transport, and are not generally carried in equipment bags because the weights will crush or damage other diving equipment in the bag during normal transport. Accordingly, several attempts have been made to provide a means for carrying diving weights in the same unit (backpack or vest) that carries the air tank. Examples are U.S. Pat. No. 2,968,159 to Edmund; U.S. Pat. No. 3,090,205 to Hurwitz et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 2,982,105 to Akers; U.S. Pat. No. 3,135,098 to root; U.S. Pat. No. 3,105,359 to Ellis; U.S. Pat. No. 3,842,611 to Anderson; U.S. Pat. No. 3,670,509 to Walters; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,964,266 to Bartlett. Such units are, at best, rudimentary, however, and have not been widely accepted.
It is also known that as a diver descends he or she is subject to increasing pressure. In sea water, a diver experiences an increase of one atmosphere of pressure every thirty-three (33) feet. That increasing pressure causes a diver to become less and less bouyant as the depth increases. Thus, a diver properly weighted on the surface for neutral bouyancy will become more and more negatively bouyant as depth increases. Divers compensate by wearing bouyancy compensator devices. It is known that bouyancy depends upon the volume of water displaced by a body. Thus, as these bouyancy compensator devices are inflated, more water volume is displaced and the diver becomes more bouyant. Thus, as the diver descends and his or her natural bouyancy decreases, the diver can inflate his or her bouyancy compensator device and maintain neutral bouyancy. Various types of bouyancy compensators are known in the art, for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,068,657 to Kobzan; U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,389 to Bohmrich et al; U.S. Pat. No. 40,114 to McKeen; U.S. Pat. No. 3,090,345 to Hulbert; U.S. Pat. No. 3,964,266 to Bartlett; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,009,583 to Buckle. In some cases, those units attempt to provide bouyancy compensation through air and water chambers which selectively admit air or water. U.S. Pat. No. 3,670,509 to Walters attempts to adjust bouyancy by selectively releasing small amounts of weight pellets.
The bouyancy compensating devices most generally used by divers, however, are inflatable vests similar to inflatable life jackets. Another type of bouyancy compensator currently on the market is a so-called back type wherein an inflatable device is carried on the diver's back. A third type of bouyancy compensating device typically used is an inflatable device carried around the diver's neck and chest, generally referred to as a "horsecollar", and is similar to the commonly known "Mae West" type life vest.
The bouyancy compensators of the prior art and those available currently, however, have suffered from a number of disadvantages. First, the vest-type bouyancy compensators constrain a diver's movements and, because those vests are also designed to carry the weight of the air tank, those vests are subject to strain and distortion out of the water due to the weight of the tank. Moreover, air is contained in the vest throughout an inflatable internal bladder, meaning that air is present both in front of the diver and on the diver's back. That air renders swimming in a face-down supine position more difficult. Additionally, the added bulk of the vest in water, particularly when inflated, not only restricts the diver's movements, but adds mass to the diver's profile. That added mass increases drag with the consequence that more effort by the diver is required to swim through the water. Accordingly, the diver tires out earlier than otherwise necessary.
The so-called back type of bouyancy compensator maintains the air volume at a diver's back thus rendering swimming in a face-down supine position easier than with the vest-type bouyancy compensator device. A disadvantage, however, is that upon surfacing the back type bouyancy compensators float divers in a face-down position; obviously, an undesirable position particularly if the diver was unconscious or injured.
The "Mae West" or horsecollar type bouyancy compensator devices do not provide much bouyancy and, because the inflatable portion is on the diver's chest, restrict swimming in a face-down supine position.